John Donne

by John Donne

  Pestis; At in nostra fit Medicina Cruce,

  Serpens; fixa Cruci si sit Natura; Crucíque

  A fixo, nobis, Gratia tota fluat.

  Omnia cum Crux sint, Crux Anchora fixa, sigillum

  Non tam dicendum hoc, quam Catechismus erit.

  Mitto, nec exigua, exiguâ sub imagine, dona,

  [20] Pignora amicitiae, et munera; Vota, preces.

  Plura tibi accumulet, sanctus cognominis, Ille

  Regia qui flavo Dona sigillat Equo.

  A sheaf of snakes used heretofore to be

  My seal, the crest of our poor family.

  Adopted in God’s family, and so

  Our old coat lost, unto new arms I go.

  The cross (my seal at baptism) spread below,

  Does, by that form, into an anchor grow.

  Crosses grow anchors; bear, as thou should’st do

  Thy cross, and that cross grows an anchor too.

  But He, that makes our crosses anchors thus,

  [10] Is Christ, who there is crucified for us.

  Yet may I, with this, my first serpents hold,

  God gives new blessings, and yet leaves the old;

  The Serpent may, as wise, my pattern be;

  My poison, as he feeds on dust, that’s me.

  And as he rounds the earth to murder sure,

  My death he is, but on the cross, my cure.

  Crucify nature then, and then implore

  All grace from Him, crucified there before;

  When all is cross, and that cross anchor grown,

  [20] This seal’s a catechism, not a seal alone.

  Under that little seal great gifts I send,

  Works, and prayers, pawns, and fruits of a friend.

  And may that saint which rides in our great seal,

  To you, who bear his name, great bounties deal.

  Prose

  Prose Letters

  Madam (‘I will have leave to speak like a lover’)

  Madam,

  I will have leave to speak like a lover; I am not altogether one, for though I love more than any yet, my love hath not the same mark and end with others. How charitably you deal with us of these parts, that at this time of the year (when the sun forsakes us) you come to us and suffer us not (out of your mercy) to taste the bitterness of a winter; but, madam, you owe me this relief because in all that part of this summer which I spent in your presence, you doubled the heat, and I loved under the rage of a hot sun and your eyes. That heart which you melted then no winter shall freeze, but it shall ever keep that equal temper which you gave it, [10] soft enough to receive your impressions and hard enough to retain them. It must not taste to you as a negligence or carelessness that I have not visited your lady in these days of your being here; I call it rather a devout humility that I thus ask leave, and be content to believe from him that can as impossibly lie to you as hate you, that by commandment I am suddenly thrown out of the town; so daily and diversely are we tempested that are not our own. At my return (which therefore I will hasten) I will be bold to kiss that fair virtuous hand which doth much in receiving this letter and may do easily much more in sending another to him [20] whose best honour is that he is your lieutenant of himself.

  Anonim

  ‘I send to you now that I may know how I do’

  I send to you now that I may know how I do because upon your opinion of me all I depend; for though I be troubled with the extremity of such a sickness as deserves at least pity if not love, yet I were as good to send to a conjurer for good fortune as to a physician for health. Indeed I am oppressed with such a sadness as I am glad of nothing but that I am it: if it had pleased you to have nourished and brought up so much love in your breast as you have done grief, perchance I should have had as much love in your service as I have done grief; yet I should account even sorrow good payment if by mine yours were lessened: [10] now I vene and purge my body with physic when my desperate mind is sick as they batter city walls when the citizens are stubborn: but by all this labour of my pen my mind is no more comforted than a condemned prisoner would be to see his chamber swept and made clean. Only you know whether ever I shall be better, and only you can tell me (for you are my destiny) whether I were best to die now, or endeavour to live and keep the great honour of being

  your servant

  To the Right Worshipful Sir George More, Knight

  (‘If a very respective fear of your displeasure’)

  Sir,

  If a very respective fear of your displeasure, and a doubt that my lord, whom I know ought of your worthiness to love you much, would be so compassionate with you as to add his anger to yours, did not so much increase my sickness, as that I cannot stir, I had taken the boldness to have done the office of this letter by waiting upon you myself, to have given you truth and clearness of this matter between your daughter and me; and to show to you plainly the limits of our fault, by which I know your wisdom will proportion the punishment. So long since, as at her being at York House, this had foundation: and so much then of [10] promise and contract built upon it, as without violence to conscience might not be shaken. At her lying in town this last parliament, I found means to see her twice or thrice: We both knew the obligations that lay upon us, and we adventured equally, and about three weeks before Christmas we married. And as at the doing, there were not used above five persons, of which I protest to you by my salvation, there was not one that had any dependence or relation to you, so in all the passage of it did I forbear to use any such person, who by furthering of it might violate any trust or duty towards you. The reasons why I did not fore-acquaint [20] you with it (to deal with the same plainness that I have used), were these: I knew my present estate less than fit for her; I knew (yet I knew not why) that I stood not right in your opinion; I knew that to have given any intimation of it, had been to impossibilitate the whole matter. And then having those honest purposes in our hearts, and those fetters in our consciences, methinks we should be pardoned if our fault be but this, that we did not by fore-revealing of it, consent to our hindrance and torment. Sir, I acknowledge my fault to be so great as I dare scarce offer any other prayer to you in mine own behalf than this, to believe this [30] truth, that I neither had dishonest end nor means. But for her, whom I tender much more than my fortunes, or life (else I would I might neither joy in this life, nor enjoy the next), I humbly beg of you that she may not, to her danger, feel the terror of your sudden anger. I know this letter shall find you full of passion, but I know no passion can alter your reason and wisdom, to which I adventure to command these particulars: that it is irremediably done; that if you incense my lord, you destroy her and me; that it is easy to give us happiness; and that my endeavours and industry, if it please you to prosper them, may soon make me somewhat [40] worthier of her. If any take the advantage of your displeasure against me, and fill you with ill thoughts of me, my comfort is that you know, that faith and thanks are due to them only, that speak when their informations might do good, which now it cannot work towards any party. For my excuse, I can say nothing except I knew what were said to you. Sir, I have truly told you this matter, and I humbly beseech you, so to deal in it as the persuasions of nature, reason, wisdom, and Christianity shall [50] inform you, and to accept the vows of one whom you may now raise or scatter, which are, that as all my love is directed unchangeably upon her, so all my labours shall concur to her contentment, and to show my humble obedience to yourself.

  From my lodging by the

  Savoy. 20 February [1602]

  Yours in all duty and humbleness,

  J. Donne

  Sir (‘I write not to you out of mine poor library’)

  A.v[uestra] Merced.

  Sir,

  I write not to you out of mine poor library where to cast mine eye upon good authors kindles or refreshes sometimes meditations not unfit to communicate to near friends, nor from the highway where I am contracted and inverted into myself, which are my two ordinary forges of letters to you. But I wri
te from the fireside in my parlour, and in the noise of three gamesome children, and by the side of her whom, because I have transplanted into a wretched fortune, I must labour to disguise that from her by all such honest devices as giving her my company [10] and discourse; therefore, I steal from her all the time which I give this letter, and it is therefore that I take so short a list and gallop so fast over it. I have not been out of my house since I received your packet. As I have much quenched my senses and disused my body from pleasure and so tried how I can endure to be my own grave, so I try now how I can suffer a prison. And since it is but to build one wall more about our soul, she is still in her own centre, how many circumferences soever fortune or our own perverseness cast about her. I would I could as well entreat her to go out, as she knows whither to go. But if I melt [20] into a melancholy whilest I write, I shall be taken in the manner, and I sit by one too tender towards these impressions, and it is so much our duty to avoid all occasions of giving them sad apprehensions as St Hierome accuses Adam of no other fault in eating the apple but that he did it ne contristaretur delicias suas. I am not careful what I write because the enclosed letters may dignify this ill favoured bark, and they need not grudge so coarse a countenance because they are now to accompany themselves; my man fetched them, and therefore I can say no more of them than themselves say. Mistress Meauly entreated me by her letter to hasten hers, as I think, for by my troth I cannot read it. [30] My Lady was dispatching in so much haste for Twicknam, as she gave no word to a letter which I sent with yours; of Sir Tho[mas] Bartlet I can say nothing, nor of the plague, though your letter bid me, but that he diminishes, the other increases, but in what proportion I am not clear. To them at Hammersmith and Mistress Herbert I will do your command. If I have been good in hope or can promise any little offices in the future, probably it is comfortable, for I am the worst present man in the world; yet the instant, though it be nothing, joins times together, and therefore this unprofitableness, since I have been, and will [40] still endeavour to be so, shall not interrupt me now from being

  Your servant and lover

  J. Donne.

  To Sir H[enry] Good[y]ere

  (‘Every Tuesday I make account’)

  Sir,

  Every Tuesday I make account, that I turn a great hourglass and consider that a week’s life is run out since I writ. But if I ask myself what I have done in the last watch, or would do in the next, I can say nothing; if I say that I have passed it without hurting any, so may the spider in my window. The primitive monks were excusable in their retirings and enclosures of themselves, for even of them every one cultivated his own garden and orchard, that is, his soul and body, by meditation and manufactures; and they ought the world no more since they consumed none of her sweetness nor begot others to burden [10] her. But for me, if I were able to husband all my time so thriftily as not only not to wound my soul in any minute by actual sin, but not to rob and cozen her by giving any part to pleasure or business, but bestow it all upon her in meditation, yet even in that I should wound her more and contract another guiltiness, as the eagle were very unnatural if because she is able to do it, she should perch a whole day upon a tree, staring in contemplation of the majesty and glory of the sun, and let her young eaglets starve in the nest. Two of the most precious things which [20] God hath afforded us here for the agony and exercise of our sense and spirit, which are a thirst and inhiation after the next life, and a frequency of prayer and meditation in this, are often envenomed and putrefied, and stray into a corrupt disease. For as God doth thus occasion, and positively concur to evil, that when a man is purposed to do a great sin, God infuses some good thoughts which make him choose a less sin or leave out some circumstance which aggravated that, so the devil doth not only suffer but provoke us to some things naturally good, upon condition that we shall omit some other more necessary and [30] more obligatory. And this is his greatest subtlety; because herein we have the deceitful comfort of having done well, and can very hardly spy our error because it is but an insensible omission and no accusing act. With the first of these I have often suspected myself to be overtaken, which is, with a desire of the next life; which though I know it is not merely out of a weariness of this, because I had the same desires when I went with the tide and enjoyed fairer hopes than now, yet I doubt worldly encumbrances have increased it. I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him merely seize me, and only declare [40] me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwreck, I would do it in a sea where mine impotency might have some excuse, not in a sullen weedy lake where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming. Therefore, I would fain do something, but that I cannot tell what is no wonder. For to choose is to do, but to be no part of any body is to be nothing. At most, the greatest persons are but great wens and excrescences, men of wit and delightful conversation, but as moles for ornament, except they be so incorporated into the body of the world, that they contribute something to the sustentation of the whole. This I made account that I begun early [50] when I understood the study of our laws, but was diverted by the worst voluptuousness, which is an hydroptic, immoderate desire of human learning and languages, beautiful ornaments to great fortunes, but mine needed an occupation and a course, which I thought I entered well into when I submitted myself to such a service as I thought might employ those poor advantages, which I had. And there I stumbled too, yet I would try again, for to this hour I am nothing, or so little that I am scarce subject and argument good enough for one of mine own letters. Yet I fear that doth not ever proceed from a good root, that I am so [60] well content to be less, that is, dead. You, sir, are far enough from these descents, your virtue keeps you secure, and your natural disposition to mirth will preserve you; but lose none of these holds. A slip is often as dangerous as a bruise, and though you cannot fall to my lowness, yet in a much less distraction you may meet my sadness; for he is no safer which falls from an high tower into the leads than he which falls from thence to the ground. Make, therefore, to yourself some mark, and go towards it allegrement. Though I be in such a planetary and erratic fortune that I can do nothing constantly, yet you may [70] find some constancy in my constant advising you to it.

  Your hearty, true friend

  J. Donne

  To Sir H[enry] G[oodyere]

  (‘It should be no interruption to your pleasures’)

  Sir,

  It should be no interruption to your pleasures to hear me often say that I love you, and that you are as much my meditation as myself: I often compare not you and me, but the sphere in which your resolutions are and my wheel, both, I hope, concentric to God, for methinks the new astronomy is thus applyable well, that we which are a little earth should rather move towards God, than that He which is fulfilling, and can come no whither, should move towards us.

  To your life full of variety, nothing is old, nor new to mine. [10] And as to that life, all stickings and hesitations seem stupid and stony, so to this, all fluid slipperinesses and transitory migrations seem giddy and feathery. In that life one is ever in the porch or postern, going in or out, never within his house, himself. It is a garment made of remnants, a life ravelled out into ends, a line discontinued, and a number of small wretched points, useless, because they concur not: a life built of past and future, not proposing any constant present. They have more pleasures than we, but not more pleasure; they joy more often, we longer; and no man but of so much understanding as may [20] deliver him from being a fool would change with a madman, which had a better proportion of wit in his often lucidis.

  You know, they which dwell farthest from the sun, if in any convenient distance, have longer days, better appetites, better digestion, better growth, and longer life. And all these advantages have their minds who are well removed from the scorchings, and dazzlings, and exhalings of the world’s glory; but neither of our lives are in such extremes, for you living at court without ambition, which would burn you, or envy which would divest others, live in the sun, not in
the fire, and I which [30] live in the country without stupefying, am not in darkness, but in shadow, which is not no light, but a pallid, waterish, and diluted one. As all shadows are of one colour if you respect the body from which they are cast (for our shadows upon clay will be dirty, and in a garden, green and flowery), so all retirings into a shadowy life are alike from all causes, and alike subject to the barbarousness and insipid dullness of the country; only the employment, and that upon which you cast and bestow your pleasure, business or books, gives it the tincture and beauty. But, truly, wheresoever we are, if we can but tell ourselves truly [40] what and where we would be, we may make any state and place such. For we are so composed that if abundance or glory scorch and melt us, we have an earthly cave, our bodies, to go into by consideration, and cool ourselves; and if we be frozen and contracted with lower and dark fortunes, we have within us a torch, a soul, lighter and warmer than any without. We are therefore our own umbrellas, and our own sun.

  These, sir, are the salads and onions of Michin, sent to you with as wholesome affection as your other friends send melons and quelques choses from court and London. If I present you not as good diet as they, I would yet say grace to theirs, and bid [50] much good do it you. I send you, with this, a letter, which I sent to the countess. It is not my use nor duty to do so. But for your having of it, there were but two consents, and I am sure you have mine, and you are sure you have hers. I also writ to her ladyship for the verses she showed in the garden, which I did not only to extort them, nor only to keep my promise of writing, for that I had done in the other letter, and perchance she has forgotten the promise, nor only because I think my letters just good enough for a progress, but because I would write apace to her, while it is possible to express that which I [60] yet know of her, for by this growth I see how soon she will be ineffable.